LEXINGTON, Ky.—They did not talk much of bubbles, quality wins, the selection committee or March Madness. The Kentucky Wildcats weren’t really entitled to any of this. These somewhat pleasant diversions are reserved for teams with (slightly) greater accomplishments, (a bit) more momentum and a (far) more established sense of how the game ought to be played.

There was only one reasonable goal available to UK Saturday afternoon at Rupp Arena.

“We just wanted to win the game so bad,” UK freshman forward Alex Poythress said. “We just came off two losses. We all hate the bad taste in our mouths with a loss. The mood’s always down. And now we feel like we’re doing something. We just really wanted to win. We didn’t focus on anything else, really.”

Kentucky was so focused at the beginning against No. 11 Florida, Gators coach Billy Donovan called timeout after just two defensive possessions. The Wildcats were so focused in the end, they didn’t allow the Gators to score a point for the final 7:36.

UK center Willie Cauley-Stein was so carefully aggressive he controlled the lane at both ends while carrying four personal fouls through the last 11 minutes. Guard Julius Mays, the only senior playing for the ‘Cats on Senior Day, was so confident he all but ordered coach John Calipari to get him the ball with 10 seconds left so he could attempt the free throws that might ensure a victory. Mays hit them both, and Kentucky won, 61-57, and an NCAA bid suddenly became possible again.

With a presentable SEC Tournament performance—one or two wins—Kentucky can expect to find itself somewhere in the field, if perhaps only at its very edge in the First Four.

“At our best, we are an NCAA Tournament team,” Calipari said afterward. “When we're not at our best, we're not very good.”

When Calipari spoke with his players Friday, he gave each of those in the rotation a set of two items they needed to handle in order for the Wildcats (21-10) to be successful. After each one acknowledged he was capable of fulfilling those requests, he asked how many of the players trusted their teammates to handle their business. No one believed.

When Calipari pressed them on it, asking the players what they expected to happen if every player managed his assignment, they began to believe.

"I think they grew up,” Mays said. “They didn't have any choice. They knew it was do-or-die and that we needed this win more than anything."

In the end, it appeared as though the Wildcats staged a sort of epic comeback, but in fact they were in command for much of Saturday’s game. They jumped to an 11-2 advantage at the start. They left the court tied at the half and held a 45-38 lead with 13:43 remaining in the game. It certainly was not going to be easy, but Kentucky was playing like the better team on this day.

At 13:42, however, Cauley-Stein was called for his fourth personal foul. Calipari removed him, as one would expect. It only took a shade more than two minutes for Florida to wipe out the UK lead and take control. Although Calipari sent Cauley-Stein back in the game near the 11-minute mark, the Wildcats did not begin to recover until they’d fallen into a 57-50 hole.

“I didn’t have any choice,” Calipari said. “I said, ‘I'm forgetting he has four.’ I told him to stay down. ‘A basket doesn't kill us. You fouling out can kill us.’ He can play with four fouls.

“That team we had out that last seven minutes, every one of them guarded. They just locked down, rebounded, went and got balls, made a couple shots to get it close, came out of timeouts did some stuff, listened.“

Given that Cauley-Stein was back as the Florida lead expanded, it didn’t seem his presence in the game would make a difference in the end. As it turned out, it was specifically his presence that determined the game. Florida missed its final 11 shots, including some quality, close-in attempts by such fine players as center Patric Young and point guard Scottie Wilbekin.

The Wildcats caught up with 4:07 left on a pair of free throws by point guard Ryan Harrow and then took the lead for good on another by Cauley-Stein.

There was one moment in the closing stages of the game where Poythress missed a defensive assignment that infuriated Calipari, who removed him from the game. After Poythress’ teammates took care of the on-bench discipline, however, Poythress asked—maybe even demanded—that he return to the game to do things properly.

“It was just time to grow up, really,” Poythress said.

“He went back in and finished those last seven minutes and was a beast,” Calipari said

When the season began, the only drama that figured to be staged at Rupp on the final day of the regular season would involve perhaps Kentucky and Florida playing for the SEC title and perhaps how high in the NCAA Tournament field each team would be seeded.

When the day finally arrived, the Gators (24-6, 14-4) already had clinched the SEC title and the real spectacle involved whether a team that began the season ranked in the top five, whose predecessors won the NCAA title, would find itself in the exclusive but undesirable club of those reigning champs excluded from defending their title.

The esteem with which the Wildcats began the season belonged mostly to Calipari and somewhat to the players who’d gone directly before them, from John Wall and DeMarcus Cousin (dual SEC champs and Elite Eight) to Brandon Knight and Terrence Jones (SEC tourney champs and Final Four) to Anthony Davis and Michael Kidd-Gilchrist (SEC regular-season champs and NCAA titlists).

All proved extraordinary things were possible for talented freshmen.

And so it was natural to expect Poythress, guard Archie Goodwin and center Nerlens Noel would be in line to approximate their achievements. Even before Noel was lost for the season with an early February knee injury, however, it was clear this team was not progressing in the same manner.

They now have lost every road game played in his absence and had won every previous home game, but Florida represented by far the greatest challenge. Calipari wanted to see if his players, having courted this circumstance, would be desperate enough to escape it. He compared it to being adrift in the ocean, about to go under.